


Heavy

by ElDiablito_SF



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Gen, Nighttime conversations, Totally not passing the Bechdel test, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 06:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15261084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: “He was your friend, too,” Madi speaks quietly into the night air.





	Heavy

**Author's Note:**

> Written for BS Rarepair Week: platonic pairing <3

The boards of Miranda’s porch are soft and warm under Flint’s tired hip bones. Soft and warm like a current he wants to throw himself headlong into. Like the night air, like sand under his toes. He cannot stay inside the house, not now that it’s been defiled by everything Billy and whatever _he’s_ become. Flint doesn’t want to think about that. If Billy could conjure Long John Silver from a violent incident and a few haphazardly thrown words, then what could Billy conjure from himself? What would he conjure next, now that Long John Silver was no more?

The boards creek behind his back and Madi’s shadow falls across his own before she sinks down next to him on the porch step. _Is it over?_ her words from before come back to him unbidden. Is it? Flint will not think of it. He can’t.

“He was your friend, too,” Madi speaks quietly into the night air.

Flint is still, measuring the heaviness of her presence against his own. “He was,” he replies. The past tense burns his tongue. 

“He said once,” Madi continues, “that as long as he had your true friendship, that you would have his. He would have followed you anywhere.”

“He said that?” Flint asks, his voice quivers.

“He did.” 

“He… had my true friendship,” Flint says and looks up to the stars. He isn’t a particularly religious man, and wherever Silver may have gone, surely he wouldn’t be looking down on him right now from up there, but Flint isn’t ready to imagine the alternative.

“He said,” Madi’s hand settles over Flint’s, “that your hands were always much warmer than he expected to find them.” The weight of her hand is soft but grounding and her flingers slide in between the grooves of Flint’s own fingers. Her hand is so much smaller than his. “I can see now how true that is.”

“He… told you that?”

“He did.”

Flint doesn’t speak, but lets her fingers slide in between his own. He should flip his hand over and hold hers, he should hold on to this hand, perhaps the only other living hand that’s ever touched _him_ besides his own. Who knows, who knows…

“He also told me how when you discovered I had braided some of his hair you had taunted him. So to taunt you back, he challenged you to braid his hair on the opposite side. And that you did.” The memory of it is still vivid in Flint’s mind’s eye, the easy gesture of tucking the newly plaited thing behind Silver’s ear with a proud smirk. “He said the touch of your hand was much softer than he ever thought it would be.”

Flint turns his hand over, upwards towards the cloudless sky, palm towards her palm, and their fingers entwine at last.

“What did he tell you of me?” she asks. Her eyes are glowing embers in the darkness and of all the things and people that Flint has brought here to Miranda’s house, she is by far his favourite. He wishes Miranda was still alive to meet her. They would have liked each other instantly, he’s certain of that.

“He did not speak to me of you,” Flint admits. “His love for you was private. Sacred.”

“It was new. Unformed.”

“New, unformed love can be most keenly felt when it is lost,” Flint says with a private sigh. “I am surprised, though, that he spoke to you of me,” he admits. It makes the possibility that Silver had told her where the treasure is buried suddenly more real, but Flint won’t call her bluff on it yet. He’d never sworn him to secrecy about the touch of his hands.

“He had need of it,” Madi smiles. “There was no one else he could confide it in, Captain. And thoughts of you had filled him to the brim, he was bound to spill over.”

“But why…” Flint’s voice breaks. “Why did he feel that he could tell you… these things?”

“When your people first came to my island, I had many questions for your quartermaster. Questions about Nassau, of those who lived there, those who ruled it. He had spoken to me of Eleanor Guthrie.” Her eyes catch the stars and for a moment Flint can’t remember what it was that they were speaking of. “He had told me of her love affair with Captain Vane. And I had asked him then if Eleanor had not also taken any female lovers.”

Flint startles, sways a bit, like the bodies of the men Billy had hung out as a warning to all traitors.

“You too?” Flint says carefully.

“Me too,” Madi nods. Her hand squeezes his own. Flint wonders briefly what Miranda would think if he were to bring Madi to this house after the war. She could breathe new life into it so easily.

“I hated him,” Flint says, “then I loved him.” There is a heaviness between them that he knows cannot be shared, no matter how much they try. They will each carry their own burden, just as he and Miranda did.

“He was my friend, too,” she says.

But for now, he will hold her hand. Her hand is light, and he can bear at least that much a little longer.


End file.
